NEC Foundation of America announces $244,000 in new grants

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Melville, NY, June 12, 2003: NEC Foundation of America today announced grants totaling $244,000 to seven organizations. The grants demonstrate the foundation’s focus on projects with national reach and impact in the arena of technology for people with disabilities. Funded projects will raise awareness about assistive technology and apply existing hardware and software in ways to better serve people with disabilities. Some projects are directed to youngsters in the classroom, others to people who have lost language skills due to stroke, and still others to parents and service providers of people with disabilities.

“We are confident that the impact of these projects will be significant for many years to come,” noted Hisashi Kaneko, president of NEC Foundation of America. “We are consistently impressed by the stewardship and productivity of the nonprofit organizations that we support.”

Organizations funded in this recent round of grants from NEC Foundation of America include:

Alliance for Technology Access San Rafael, CA	$35,000
To assist with the creation and targeted outreach to raise awareness of the 4th edition of Computer and Web Resources for People with Disabilities: A Guide to Exploring Today’s Assistive Technology to be published in late 2003. Visit www.ATAccess.org.

Benetech
Palo Alto, CA

$25,000

For national outreach and collection development efforts to make Bookshare.org a core provider of accessible books for K-12 students nationwide. Bookshare.org is an online book-sharing service for people with visual and reading disabilities that also meets the stringent copyright law exemption for providing accessible electronic books. This innovative project dramatically increases access to books, promoting literacy and access to learning for a group estimated at three million people in the U.S., including one million students. Visit www.benetech.org.

CAST
Wakefield, MA

$35,000

To help fund the creation of a new version of the CAST eReader™. This version will offer new features to support the development of reading skills in elementary-school-aged children with a range of disabilities. The program will be the first tool that will use both synthetic speech and natural voice to navigate a range of digital educational content and provide critically needed reading supports for young readers with disabilities as they begin to read independently. Visit www.cast.org.

Carnegie Mellon University School of Computer Science Human Computer Interaction Institute (HCII)
Pittsburgh, PA

$50,000

To support work on deployment of Handhelds as Assistive Technologies for People with Muscular Disabilities. The project builds on extensive human computer interface (HCI) work at Carnegie Mellon; this project studies the use of a Personal Digital Assistant (PDA) as an alternative input device for computers and how to create remote controls for everyday appliances that will be usable by people with disabilities. Visit www.cmu.edu or www.pebbles.hcii.cmu.edu/assistive.

Albert Einstein Healthcare Network Moss Rehab
Philadelphia, PA

$50,000

To disseminate a user-friendly computer assisted treatment program, MossTalkWords®, to a national network of researchers and clinicians who will select and train appropriate patients with aphasia to use the software, then evaluate the effectiveness. Dissemination will occur primarily through the National Institutes of Health-funded Northeast Cognitive Rehabilitation Research Network. Visit www.mosstalk.com.

Muscular Dystrophy Family Foundation, Inc.
Indianapolis, IN

$9,000

Toward the core adaptive equipment project which offers last-resort financial assistance for the purchase and repair of orthopedic equipment and appliances, including manual and power wheelchairs, leg braces, lifts, hospital beds, breathing machines, shower chairs, lift chairs and computers and communication devices for educational purposes. This final category includes voice input aids, on-screen keyboard filters and alternative input devices. Visit www.mdff.org.

Music Intelligence Neural Development (M.N.I.D.) Institute Costa Mesa, CA	$40,000
For national expansion of the technology-based Math+Music (M+M) program for grades 2, 3 and 4, toward the goal of reaching one million students within 3-5 years. Funds will be used to help pay costs of related marketing materials to expand outreach and dissemination. Visit www.mindinstitute.net.

For more information about NEC Foundation of America, including guidelines, please call 631.753.7021, or visit www.necfoundation.org. NEC Foundation of America was established in 1991 and endowed at $10 million by NEC and its United States subsidiaries. Income generated by the endowment is donated to nonprofit organizations in the United States in support of programs with national reach and impact in the arena of assistive technology for people with disabilities. Through its grants, NEC Foundation of America underscores its philosophy of advancing society through technology and enabling individuals to realize their full potential.

About Benetech

The Benetech Initiative is a Silicon Valley nonprofit that develops sustainable, technology-based solutions to address pressing social challenges in areas such as disability, human rights, education and literacy. Many beneficial technologies have compelling social applications that are not developed because such efforts do not meet for-profit investors’ financial expectations. Benetech specifically pursues endeavors with a strong social, rather than financial, rate of return on investment, bringing commercial technology and private sector management techniques to bear in creating innovative, non-traditional solutions to challenging social issues. More information on Benetech and its projects can be found at www.benetech.org or by calling (650) 475-5440.

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